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The Secret His­tory of Democ­racy was re-issued in a paper­back edi­tion, yes­ter­day. Much more rea­son­ably priced than last year’s hard­cover edi­tion, the book will now be able to reach ordi­nary stu­dents and school libraries. The crit­i­cal recep­tion of the book has been very grat­i­fy­ing.
Chapters/Indigo Books (Canada) ; Ama­zon (USA) ; Barnes & Noble (USA) ; Abe­Books (USA) ; SBS Livraria Inter­na­tional (Brazil) ; Amazon.UK (UK) ; Bookstore.co (UK) ; Foyles (UK) ; W.H. Smith (UK) ; Van­Stockum (NETHERLANDS) ; Thalia.de (GERMANY) ; Flip­kart (INDIA) [hard­cover only] ; Kinokunya (MALAYSIA) ; Ama­zon出品サービス (JAPAN) ; Seek­books (Australia)

I have a per­sonal inter­est in Tim­buktu (see blog for Mar 7, 2006), so I have fol­lowed, as best as I can, the recent events in Mali that affect it. After the fall of Gaddafi’s regime, sev­eral hun­dred young Tuareg who had been serv­ing as mer­ce­nar­ies in his army have returned to Niger and Mali. Along with them came a large stock of weapons. This re-ignited the low-level civil war which had come to an appar­ently sat­is­fac­tory peace set­tle­ment in 2009. Dis­at­is­fac­tion with the response to this renewal of vio­lence seems to have trig­gered a coup d’état by the country’s mil­i­tary against the demo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected gov­ern­ment. As a con­se­quence of the insta­bil­ity fol­low­ing the coup, the “National Move­ment for the Lib­er­a­tion of Aza­wad” (MNLA) quickly occu­pied the three largest north­ern towns (Gao, Tim­buktu and Kidal) and declared an inde­pen­dent state of Aza­wad, cleav­ing away the thinly pop­u­lated north­ern half of Mali.

Few events in the last few years have depressed me as much. Mali had lifted itself by its boot­straps from an intensely repres­sive Marx­ist dic­ta­tor­ship, heav­ily involved in the slave trade, to become West Africa’s most promis­ing democ­racy. Now that promise is evaporating.

The pop­u­la­tion of Tim­buktu is over­whelm­ingly eth­nic Song­hai (unre­lated lin­guis­ti­cally or eth­ni­cally to the Tuareg). There was once a sub­stan­tial Tuareg minor­ity in the city, but most left dur­ing the civil war. The Bam­bara, the prin­ci­ple eth­nic group of Mali, inhabit the far south, and were never present in Tim­buktu in sig­nif­i­cant num­ber. Ali Farka Touré (1939–2006), the gui­tar player of genius, and per­haps the kind­est and most humane fig­ure of the region, was of eth­ni­cally mixed parent­age, and per­formed in both the Song­hai and Tuareg lan­guages, as well as French. As the uncor­rupt­able mayor of his native vil­lage, as well as an inter­na­tion­ally renowned artist, he was the liv­ing sym­bol of peace, inter-ethnic col­lab­o­ra­tion, and democ­racy in Mali. He was at the heart of the extra­or­di­nary musi­cal renais­sance that emerged in Mali, hand in hand with democ­racy. In a way, I’m glad that he died with­out hav­ing to wit­ness this dev­as­tat­ing rever­sal of his life work.

The Tuareg in Mali have def­i­nitely legit­i­mate griev­ances (there were abuses by the army dur­ing the civil war), but their sit­u­a­tion has never been com­pa­ra­ble to what it has been in neigh­bour­ing Niger. The renewal of fight­ing has more to do with very un-traditional Tuareg youth, de-culturalized, recruited into var­i­ous armies and then cast loose look­ing for some­thing vio­lent to do, and with ambi­tious men look­ing for a new ide­o­log­i­cal power base on which to build their lit­tle empire. Many are cast-offs from Gaddafi’s thug army. The MNLA, how­ever, is not nec­es­sar­ily in charge of its own rebel­lion. It has been increas­ingly forced to rely on an expe­di­ent alliance with the dan­ger­ous Islamist group Ançar Dine, which has con­nec­tions to Al-Qaeda. This group has no motives (other than oppor­tunism) that have any­thing to do with the peo­ple of north­ern Mali, or Tuareg or Song­hai cul­ture. They are dan­ger­ous fanat­ics. I sus­pect very strongly that they have already side­lined the orig­i­nal lead­er­ship of the MNLA (which is based in Gao), and are the ones who really con­trol Tim­buktu. What­ever their aims, the MNLA are demon­stra­bly idiots for con­nect­ing them­selves to them. They will soon learn that they have reaped the whirlwind.

Tuareg soci­ety is not a ready fit for the ide­o­log­i­cal Islamist move­ment. It is Tuareg males, not females, who tra­di­tion­ally cover their faces with a veil, and women have never been con­signed to par­tic­u­larly sub­servient posi­tion. Both Tuareg and Song­hai soci­eties are noth­ing like the kind of pleasure-hating, fanat­i­cal self-hatred and bar­barism that lies at the heart of the Islamist move­ment. But Ançar Dine’s power base is not sup­port from any local peo­ple, whether Tuareg or Song­hai, but the cash and ide­o­log­i­cal zealotry of an inter­na­tional move­ment. Their leader, Iyad Ag Ghaly, is a psy­cho­log­i­cally typ­i­cal fraud: once well known for booz­ing and par­ty­ing, he grew a beard and cosied up to jihadists while assigned by the Malian gov­ern­ment as a diplo­mat to Saudi Ara­bia. You can be sure that the piety is phony. 

You can also be sure that the peo­ple of Tim­buktu are about to suf­fer. So will the cause of African democracy. 

I also, under­standibly, fear for the wealth of learn­ing that might be destroyed. There are many thou­sands of books pre­served there. The library of Sankoré Uni­ver­sity in Tim­buktu was a great repos­i­tory of books for cen­turies. It was founded in 988 AD with an endow­ment by a wealthy Tuareg woman, who wanted the city to have a seat of learn­ing on par with the great urban cen­ters of Islam. There were also many pri­vate libraries. Tim­buktu was a major cen­ter of the Islamic book trade, often tak­ing pay­ment for exports in books. When the French con­quered it, many lead­ing fam­i­lies were afraid that the books would be stolen and carted off to Paris, so much of the col­lec­tion was split up and hid­den, with respon­si­ble fam­i­lies know­ing the hid­ing places. I saw only a small sam­ple of the huge total — they included many reli­gious texts, of course, but also works on geog­ra­phy, chem­istry, med­i­cine, astron­omy, and his­tory. Among them are indige­nous West African works and chron­i­cles. The vast major­ity of these works have not been trans­lated, and are only begin­ning to be cat­a­logued and assessed. I pre­sume this process has come to a halt, under the cur­rent polit­i­cal circumstances.

The new rulers of Tim­buktu are not likely to have much inter­est in, or sym­pa­thy, with this glo­ri­ous heritage.

My favourite store cookies:

Dare Black For­est Whip­pet [Forêt noire]

President’s Choice Peanut But­ter Choco­late Chunk

Nabisco Choco­late Graham

L.B. Maple Treats Sig­na­ture Line Maple Short­bread

President’s Choice Deca­dent Choco­late Chip

Voortman’s Wind­mill (Dutch gin­ger­bread)

Viau Bis­cuit Village

Dare Petits Plaisirs Gin­ger & Cin­na­mon Spice Snap [Cro­quant au gingenbre]

Voortman’s Almond Krunch

and, of course, the clas­sic Nabisco Oreo

Eight out of ten of these cook­ies are Cana­dian brands, which speaks highly for the state of Cana­dian Civilization.